Neil Marshall’s ‘Hellboy’ Will Embrace Practical Effects, R Rating

How about some good news? While the fact that the next Hellboy movie we’re gonna see won’t involve either Guillermo del Toro or Ron Perlman, new director Neil Marshall (Game of Thrones) is on the right track to keep fans of the comics happy. He recently explained that his Hellboy will go hard for the R rating, and will shy away from too many special effects.

When Marshall appeared on Mick Garris’ Post Mortem podcast (via Bloody Disgusting), he said he was looking forward to “embracing” the bloodiness of the source material.

We’ve been granted permission to do it R-rated, which for me is just like taking the cuffs off. It’s like, okay, so now we can just make the movie we want to make. Nobody’s going to stop us. So, that’s the main [difference]. And I’m sure, obviously, the success of things like ‘Deadpool‘ and ‘Logan‘ has not hurt that cause. But, also, when you go back the original material, it is kind of bloody, so I’m going to embrace that.

It’s definitely going to be as practical as we can possibly make it. I love to do stuff in camera whenever I possibly can, and use CG as the amazing tool that it is, to enhance or expand upon the world, but not to use it to replace reality, when you can do it real.

Well that’s two big sighs of relief from me right there. Marshall’s probably right about Deadpool and Logan helping to usher in this new era of superhero movies that don’t skimp on the violence factor, and it’s also exciting to hear that he doesn’t want to rely too much on CGI. Part of that is probably his television background — Game of Thrones, while in possession of a ginormous budget, is still TV, and does what it can to use practical effects wherever possible. Okay, Neil. You have our attention. Let’s see how this thing shakes out.